Scotland -- History -- Stuarts, to the Union, 1371-1707
As Dr. Galy pointed out, the new version of the "Song", to which, it
should be stated, no author's name is attached, established, on the
authority of Brantôme himself, that he had attributed to Mary Stuart
verses which he knew were not hers. It did not, however, afford any clue
to the real authorship, and the possibility that the whole poem was of
Brantôme's own composition does not seem to have occurred to Dr. Galy.
That such is the case is our firm belief. A careful comparison of the
anonymous "Chanson" with the various poems avowedly by Brantôme has
revealed such similarity, not only of thought and imagery, but even of
expression, as convinces us that nobody but himself can be the author of
_The Song of Mary Stuart_.
The 102nd sonnet in Brantôme's collection is one which he addressed to
Mlle de Limeuil. Not only is the whole tone of it strikingly similar to
that of the "Song", but it contains passages which cannot be explained
away on the assumption of mere chance resemblance. Thus, in the
thirteenth stanza of the "Song", Mary is represented as seeing her
husband if she happens to look into the water: "Soudain le voy en
l'eau". In the sonnet, Brantôme says; "_Soudain_ il m'advise qu'_en
l'eau je voy_ Limeuil". In the first part of the same stanza, the
mourning Queen is supposed to behold in the clouds the features of her
lost husband. The same idea, expressed in similar language, and with
precisely the same rhymes, occurs in some stanzas which Brantôme
addressed to a lady "Sur un ennuy qui luy survint". The main idea of the
"Song"--that of the sorrowing lady followed by the image of her lost
love, wherever she may wander--recurs repeatedly in the sonnets, of
which, indeed, several may, without exaggeration, be described as mere
expansions of some of the lines in the "Song". Altogether, we have noted
distinct parallelisms to five of the stanzas in the alleged "Chanson".
When it is remembered that, as Brantôme gives it, it consists of no more
than eleven stanzas, the proportion must appear striking. In addition to
this, it must also be noted that, in the eleven stanzas of the lament
itself, there are a number of variants--we have counted nine
altogether--which, not being attributable to inaccurate copying, or
necessary for mere adaptation, testify to a deliberate revision, hardly
likely to have been the work of anyone but the original author. In the
face of such evidence it seems to us that no alternative is left, and
that we must place Brantôme on the same level as Meunier de Querlon, who
published the once popular song, "Adieu, plaisant pays de France," and
attributed it to Mary Stuart, though he was himself the author of it.
Indeed, of the two, Brantôme is the less excusable; for, in his case, it
cannot be pleaded as an extenuating circumstance, as it can in that of
de Querlon, that he subsequently acknowledged his "mystification". In
any case, there seems to be no reasonable doubt that we must diminish by
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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